The Growing Trend of Online Learning

Online learning has shown significant growth over the last decade, as the internet and education combine to provide people with the opportunity to gain new skills. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, online learning has become more centric in people’s lives. The pandemic has forced schools, universities, and companies to remote working and this booms the usage of online learning. Even before the pandemic, Research and Markets forecast the online education market as $350 Billion by 2025, so the numbers might be updated after analyzing the growth impacts of COVID-19 on the online learning market.

While various online learning platforms like Udemy, Coursera, SkillShare, Techavilly, Simpleilearn etc are doing a good job spreading knowledge, top tier universities are also democratizing the learning by making courses accessible online. Stanford University and Harvard University give access to online courses under categories of computer science, engineering, mathematics, business, art, and personal development.

These all show one thing, there’s a huge demand from people to learn online. The reason for this demand and rapid growth of the market with a wide variety of platform options for different groups of people may be the rapid change of the world.

We’re in a world that’s changing so quickly that skills that were valued just three or four years ago are no longer relevant. People are confused and don’t know what they should be learning.” At this moment, online learning is becoming a huge catalyzer for people and companies to help the adoption of this rapid change in the world.

All those online learning enterprises have a massive amount of user data which enables those platforms to use machine learning algorithms that can enhance the learning patterns of people. Machine learning algorithms use pattern recognition which can personalize the content for each individual. For example, when a student repeatedly struggles with a concept at the course, and the platform can adjust the e-learning content to provide more detailed information to help the student.

The instantaneous feedback loops inside the platforms which are provided by other online students or the platform improve the learning curve. This also offers shy or more reticent people the opportunity to participate in class discussions more easily than face-to-face class sessions.

Source: Forbes